


Bull

by thundercaya



Category: L.A. Noire
Genre: Cole is divorced, M/M, Promotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thundercaya/pseuds/thundercaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stefan responds to Cole's promotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bull

**Author's Note:**

> Moving my old LAN works from Tumblr to here, I guess...!

This is some kind of bullshit.

I’d been a cop for quite a while, just doing what I was supposed to, getting things done. I didn’t get a lot of recognition, but I didn’t care. I got paid, and it was nice to think that people were just a bit safer because of me. I finally made detective after the riots. They put me in one of the less exciting and yet somehow more gruesome departments, but I got comfortable there, like I do, and I didn’t give any thought to moving up or doing anything beyond my job.

Then I got saddled with the Golden Boy.

This guy, let me tell you. I know pretty much every cop in the LAPD, at least vaguely, but this guy had been around for so short a time I hadn’t even met him yet before they bumped him up to detective and made him my partner. I wasn’t really happy with it. This guy, it was like he’d been visited by a vampire that feeds on humor, because not only was he not funny, he didn’t think _I_ was funny, and let me tell you that I have countless eyewitness testimonies that prove beyond reasonable doubt that I am in fact hilarious.

So I put up with this guy, because I had to, and I found out really quick how he’d managed to move up so fast. The guy was good. The guy was amazing. Add that to his modest war hero shtick, and he was exactly what the LAPD needed. Apart from his recent divorce he was absolutely perfect, and no one could even blame him for that. War changes a man, or so they say. I wouldn’t know myself.

You’d think that with a partner like this guy, my job would get easier. I could just sit back and let him take care of everything. Not the case. I actually had to work harder than ever just to keep up with him and not look like a complete waste of tax dollars. Not that I cared what the Captain thought, or the other detectives. I never cared what they thought and I still didn’t. The one whose opinion matted to me was him. It didn’t take long for me to start admiring him, and I didn’t for a minute want him to think poorly of me.

I guess you could say I sort of fell for him.

And onto him. On his couch one night when I’d finally managed to lug my way up over that bland wall of his and he was willing to have me over for drinks. In the next few minutes I found out what had been missing from sex. In the next few months I found out what had been missing from life.

Things were great for a while. We got so much more done together than I could have ever hoped to do on my own, and it made me feel amazing. Then we’d go back to his place or to my place, and he made me feel amazing again. He eventually came to find me as funny as I knew I was, and I found out he was pretty funny, too, now that I could understand his humor. Things were great.

Things couldn’t stay that way, though. Inevitably, they wanted to move him again, this time to burglary. It was pretty rough after that. Not that I couldn’t handle the job without him, but we’d gotten so used to seeing each other all day at work, and finishing at the same time since we were on the same cases. Now we couldn’t even arrange to have lunch at the same time, and we were lucky if we had more than a couple hours together at night. A lot of people have to deal with that, but we had to make adjustments.

I knew what I had to do. I had to get a promotion, too. And sure, it might seem sort of suspicious that I was suddenly interested in moving up when I never had been before, but I think a lot of people were bitter at how fast this guy was moving compared to them, and me being his partner, maybe I could play that up as my motivation. There was no guarantee that we’d be made partners again, but given our track record, the captain would have to be an idiot to keep us apart.

So I worked at it. I gave more than I even knew I had in me, getting through all my regular work, taking on extra work, coming in when I didn’t need to. He was always working anyway, so it didn’t actually cut much more into our limited time. Before long I could hear people talking about me, and I knew I was close.

Then this bullshit happened.

They moved him.

They moved him! Again! Before I’d even made it into burglary, right when I was at the door and I could just about reach in and touch him, they yanked him away from me again. And where did they plop him down after snatching him up so rudely? Homicide. Homicide! Guys like me don’t make homicide. Not until we’re middle aged and fat and they feel sorry for us being there for so long and so-and-so is retiring anyway so why not.

That’s it. I’m done.

He says it’s not that bad. He says I can do it. I don’t see how. I’m already working harder than I ever have in my life. I’m giving it everything I have. There’s nothing left to give.

So he hands me this notebook. I have notebooks. I take notes down like anyone else, key items to jog my memory when I need to. Him, he writes everything down, every little detail, though I don’t see why he needs to. He’s got the best memory of anyone I know.

So he gives me this notebook. Tells me to write down my goals. Big ones, small ones, whatever, and when I get ideas on how to reach them, to write those down too. He says not to worry about being organized. He won’t try to look at it, won’t even ask. No need to be embarrassed. This is for me and me only.

Write down my goals, he says. So far all I’ve written is this.

God, this is bullshit.


End file.
